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least in part, the unusually low water during our summers with the re- 

 moval of our forests. 



Of course no one desires to see any suspension of legitimate lumber- 

 ing interests. The whole object of the forestry agitation is to per- 

 petuate the lumbering interests, and in protecting them also to insure 

 for the State an abundant water power for the future. We may well 

 weigh the statements in the "Manufacturers' Gazette," for October 

 ;iOth, page 12, where, under head of the gratuitous power furnished 

 by nature, the following occurs: 



"Districts long neglected must become populated. Consider what 

 the Falls of Montmorenci might do for Quebec ; what the Falls of Ohio 

 might do for Louisville. How Maine will grow when the Penobscot 

 and Kennebec shall have been properly harnessed! Think of the 

 transformation that must go on in our Susquehanna Valley when the 

 water's energy shall have been turned to full account. No state in the 

 Union is more suited to this sort of evolution than Pennsylvania, with 

 her uncounted copious streams in fertile valleys and her great natural 

 wealth. Some such transformation seems bound to come; and it 

 would be no greater than has twice been wrought in this century, first 

 for hand labor, and then by the general introduction of steam. The 

 use of steam is an artifice. The nearer we get to nature, and the free 

 use of her gifts, the less we depend upon the artificial." 



Under existing conditions, where is the loss of water power to end? 

 This raises one of the most important questions before our thinkers, 

 workers and legislators to-day. 



For a thoroughly exact and reliable solution of the relations of the 

 forests to the water flow of the State, we should require much more in- 

 formation than we now possess. While this is true, it is also equally 

 true that there are certain well-founded principles upon which rea- 

 sonably exact and safe conclusions may be based, and that in order to 

 formulate information for the public benefit we are justified in using 

 the knowledge we already have. 



For example: No one who will weigh a mass of dry leaves and weigh 

 that same mass after it has been exposed to the rain will doubt that 

 leaves possess the power of retaining water. Furthermore, he would 

 recognize that while the water from above readily permeated the mass 

 of leaves, as they lay upon the soil, and entered into the earth, that at 

 the same time these very leaves, being themselves saturated with 

 moisture, would act most efficiently in retarding the evaporation of the 

 surface water in the soil. These facts are so plain that no one can 

 avoid recognizing the water retaining capacity of the leaves which lie 

 upon the forest floor. Jf we change the point of observation from the 

 forest to the field and study the constitution of the densest sward we 

 cannot fail to recognize that above the surface of the earth no such 

 water-retaining layer exists, or if it is there, it will be less thick and 

 less densely matted. Evaporation will go on much more rapidly in it 



